


opus no. 14

by weatheredlaw



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dwarf/Human Relationship(s), F/M, Happy Ending, Requited Love, Secret Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-19
Updated: 2015-10-19
Packaged: 2018-04-27 04:12:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5033251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weatheredlaw/pseuds/weatheredlaw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's like wind. It rushes in. And pulls you up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	opus no. 14

**Author's Note:**

> i had this idea some time ago. nothing too long or involved, just harritt quietly crushing on dagna and finally having the nerve to give her smooches.

Harritt isn’t a school boy. He doesn’t bluster or get nervous around women. Maker, he was _engaged_ before all of this, he knows how things work –

 _Don’t think about that, don’t think about that, just don’t **think**_ –

He’s been doing too much thinking, lately. Not enough doing. Probably why he’s gotten distracted. Probably why he’s looking where he shouldn’t, having weird dreams about _her._ And all day long, they smash metal together, and apart, and he watches her work sometimes, until the sun goes down. He tries not to think about how open the undercroft is, because sometimes it feels more open than it should.

And if Dagna’s noticed that he likes having her around, she hasn’t said anything. She spends a lot of time of in her own little world, humming songs Harritt’s never heard, telling stories – to him, maybe, he wouldn't know – and swearing. She swears sometimes. Not a lot, but just enough for him to notice. And he wouldn’t think it, just looking at her little hands and hearing the lilted, singing tones of her voice – but she’s got a mouth on her. Makes him smile.

 

* * *

 

 

“It’s perfect.” The Inquisitor holds up the sword, inspecting it in the dim light of sundown. “I’ll look at it better tomorrow, but the weight is excellent. Already feels better.”

Harritt nods, wiping his hands on his smock. “Glad you approve. Took a bit of finagling to get what we wanted–”

“The dawnstone _was_ an excellent touch, even if it was a bit difficult,” Dagna sing-songs.

“You built this together?” The Inquisitor looks between them, smiling. “Good effort. I like it. I’ll take it out with me next trip, let you know what it does.” She puts the sword in its sheath and heads out to store it with the rest of her equipment. The door slams shut behind her, sounds like closing bells.

Dagna stretches, takes off the pieces of armor she works in. She sets them carefully in their little spot in the corner and says, “I think we worked through lunch.”

“And dinner.” Harritt eyes her from his spot at the bench. “Headed to the tavern?”

“Dwarves try not to go to bed hungry.”

“Some reason for that?”

“Yes.” She smiles. “We like food.”

He trails along beside her to the tavern, listening to her count the wildflower patches along the way. Once he’s inside, though, he heads to his usual spot, far enough away from Maryden to get some peace. He orders mead and soup, fills his belly until he thinks he can go to bed happy. Across the room, Dagna is listening to Bull tell a story, her eyes shining as she imagines every detail, probably thinking of ways to include his story into her designs. She says odd little things like that – she wants Leliana’s crows in her swords, Cullen’s dogma for her gauntlets. Harritt likes to hear her say those little things, even if it makes his own methods dull in comparison. She outshines him, but that’s alright.

No one approaches him. No one ever does. The others nod, but it’s been a hard day of work for everyone, and people like himself and the others that keep this place running like their quiet time. Harritt sometimes wishes someone _would_ come toward him, just for a moment. He wishes someone would ask what he’s looking at, because he’d like to find the words to describe how he admires the strands of hair that fall from her tightly twisted bun and slide against her neck. He’d like to describe the number of freckles he can count from his place in the undercroft – sixty three, he’s always had good eyes – and he’d like to tell someone that he thinks her hands are clever and warm, because sometimes when they make something together the pads of her fingers press on his knuckles, and he can feel the roughness there that is so familiar to him – comforting like velvet.

He would like to tell someone that he thinks Dagna is as much a work of art as her creations are. But no one will ask, and he’d probably get the words all wrong anyway.

 

* * *

 

 

Sometimes the winds blow all wrong, and Harritt spends his entire morning shoveling snow out of the undercroft, watching the sun come up over the Frostbacks. Dagna shuffles in a little later than usual that day, glancing around with her nose up before she grabs a piece of metal.

“What are you doing?”

“Helping,” she says.

“You’ll slice your hands up with that.” Harritt pulls off his gloves, too big for her, but warm and thick. “Here.” Sometimes she does things without thinking.

“Oh!” She smiles and pulls the gloves on. “Thank you.” They move some of her equipment out of the way and shovel snow right off the edge onto the rocks below. “That was very satisfying,” she says, looking around. She frowns. “You already did most of it. Quick thinking.”

“Storm last night clued me in. S’not clever,” he says. She sighs and takes his gloves off, handing them back. They’re warm, still, but only in the parts where her little hands could reach.

“Someone else might have taken the day off.”

“Someone else doesn’t know a war’s on, then. No such thing as that.”

“I mean there is,” Dagna says quickly. “But we’ve got work to do.”

“S’right.”

She puts a hand on his arm. The skin burns. “This is why we get along. You understand.”

  

* * *

 

 

The keep is quiet when something big is happening. Before Adamant, they spend a lot of time working on things to keep the Inquisitor’s inner circle alive. They spend a lot of time working in complete silence. He knows when she needs help lifting something, because her voice gets loud and she kicks the heavier things until he comes over and stands with her. She knows when he can’t quite get something right, when a metal isn’t working for him, or a tint just isn’t happening. And she’ll come over with her little tools and vials and _tap-tap-tap_ —

He realizes, in between the sounds of metal on stone on wood, that she is exquisite, and he is unworthy.

It is easy to bury things, easier still when he can convince himself there’s no chance in this world he could get what he wants.

Just means nothing’s changed, and nothing ever will.

  

* * *

 

 

“What was the Hero like?” Harritt asks one day. He isn’t sure why.

“Hmm?” Dagna looks up and smiles. “The Hero of Ferelden? Oh, she was…she—” Dagna breaths. “She was a windchime. She was _wind._ She rushed through everything and she pulled me up. It didn’t matter what anyone said. She…believed in me. I make swords that look like her eyes. I remember them. The kindest mage I’d ever met.” Her eyes shine with the memory. “She was love. Everyone loved her. I miss her, all the time.”

 

* * *

 

 

Everyone is gone for the Winter Palace, and it’s the first real break they take in months. Dagna wants to learn to dance, and she’s only asked Harritt a hundred times if he knows how.

“I understand the mechanics,” she says, “but not the fire of it.”

“Dancing isn’t like fire.”

“It isn’t? It seems like it might be. I’ve watched people dance.”

Harritt reaches out, dares to offer her his hand. He shouldn’t, it isn’t right or proper, but nothing about this world seems to be either of those things, and since when has he given a damn? Right and proper hasn’t stopped him from imagining his mouth between her legs or her hands in his hair. Right and proper hasn’t stopped him from wishing he could kiss her right here, with the snow sweeping in.

So he offers her his hand, and she takes it.

“It’s like windchimes,” he says, and she flushes. “It’s like wind.”

“It rushes in,” she murmurs, and lets him lead.

_And it pulls you up._

 

* * *

 

 

“I hope this doesn’t…upset you,” the Commander says, leaning forward. Harritt has intruded on a meeting, but neither notices him. It’s been a week since the Inquisitor’s come back from the Arbor Wilds.

“Oh, no. It’s exciting,” she says, fingers twitching in her lap. Harritt stands awkwardly by the door, letting go before he means to. The noise jolts the Commander out of his stance, and he sits up, nodding respectfully.

“Master Harritt.”

“Commander.”

“The Inquisitor has asked Dagna to…work with Samson.”

Harritt nods. “Alright.”

“He may be in your work space from time to time. Is this a problem?”

Harritt shrugs. “S’long as he doesn’t make a mess of things.” The Commander nods and turns to go, leaving the two of them crushed by the silence of the undercroft. Dagna sighs, and it sounds like a song.

Harritt has become good at pretending he cannot hear them. They don’t make it better, and they don’t make it worse.

They only make it _hurt._

“Are you alright?” Dagna asks suddenly. The song stops, an ugly interruption.

“Sure. Couldn’t be anything else.”

“I think you’re lying, but I won’t ask why.” She smiles. “That’s your business. Should we finish early today?”

“No.” Harritt checks the weight of a new hammer he’s made for himself. “Troops coming back from the Wilds are going to need new equipment. Inquisitor wants some boots made. We need to keep working.” He looks at her.

“I…right. Of course.” She turns to her tools –

_Tap-tap-tap._

In time with Harritt’s heart, the uneven beat of his pulse under skin that’s cold, too cold from the air.

Oh, it might kill him.

It might be a relief.

He isn’t schoolboy, but Maker, is he in love.

 

* * *

 

 

Samson isn’t an intrusion. Harritt hardly notices he’s there. He sometimes carries things, and sometimes sits. He reads, or he listens. He never runs, he never moves unless he’s asked to.

Sometimes Dagna will talk with him and he’ll answer. Sometimes she’ll ask him a question and he pretends he didn’t hear.

He fixes one of Harritt’s tools, one day, and that’s just fine with him.

Someone asks, what it’s like having the enemy in his home. But Harritt doesn’t have an answer.

He knows a little bit about desperate men. He knows a little bit about what this world makes you do. Doesn’t make it right, doesn’t mean it’s an excuse – but it happens all the same, whether you think it could or not.

 

* * *

 

 

“Do you have family?” she asks one day. They are sitting on the edge of the undercroft, feet dangling over the snow and rocks. She is brave, he realizes, and makes him braver. He pours her another drink and she takes it back – their fingertips brush, and Harritt stares hard at a nug down below.

“Not anymore,” he says.

Dagna sighs. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

 

* * *

 

 

They are still working when the Inquisitor leaves for the Temple of Sacred Ashes. They are working when the battle begins. They are working when it ends. They are working when word comes back that Corypheus is gone. Harritt hears the clatter of tools on the rock behind him, and suddenly Dagna’s arms are tight around his waist as the spymaster’s agent disappears out the door.

Harritt turns and he can’t help but fall to his knees and clutch back at her. She is shaking, and so is he.

“It’s over,” she says.

“It is.”

“Harritt—”

He can’t help himself. He leans right in and kisses her nose.

He’s wanted to do it for so long.

She gasps, a tiny little thing, and looks up at him. “You—”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” Then. “ _Oh._ ” She laughs, and it sounds like the _tap-tap-tap_ of her tools on rock and wood and glass. She breathes and she smiles, and she kisses him on the nose right back. “And me.”

“And you.”

“Can I collect this?” she asks quietly. Her hands reach up and touch his face, his mouth and ears. “Can I remember this, forever?”

“I’ll remember it for you, if you can’t.”

“How will I get it from you when I need it, then?”

He touches his forehead to hers. “By staying with me, if you can.”

“For…how long?”

“As long as this world allows.”

And then – her lips on his. Harritt trails his fingers in her hair, strokes the strands that have spilled out, and licks his way into her mouth. A sweet tongue, sweet teeth, all of it like clean, clean snow – he moans and he wants to cry and he wants to lift her up and carry her away.

“How can we, though?”

“We’ll think of something.”

“Where will we go?”

“We don’t need to think about it yet.”

“ _Harritt_ —”

“Turn off that brain,” he murmurs. “Just for a little bit.”

“You know I can’t.”

He pulls her bottom lip between his teeth and she gasps. “Then let me help.”

 

* * *

 

 

They sit together in the tavern while everyone celebrates. The Inquisitor hugs them both, but no one else really seems to notice them. Doesn’t matter much to Harritt – she reaches out and clutches his hand in one of hers, the other twitching with a thousand unsaid thoughts.

“We should go to bed,” he says, and she follows him to his meager little quarters. They sleep curled together like commas on the page, and in the morning he learns that her legs draped over his shoulders is hardly a weight at all.

 


End file.
